Get Lost, Whitey! How the Canadian Government Uses Institutional Racism in Its Hiring Practices

Jul.26,2010

It is strange that somebody finally realized that the hiring policies of the Government of Canada are plagued with racism. That’s nothing new. Everybody with even a modest IQ level has been painfully aware of that while applying for any government job.

The strange thing is that the Government finally stated that they plan to do something about it. All that commotion was started few days ago by Sara Landriault. Being a stay-at-home mom she was out of the work force for few years. After raising her children she decided to look for a job. She was interested in the position of an administrative assistant at citizen and immigration, but the friendly multicultural racists from the human resources department had a nasty surprise for her. It turned out the job was open only to aboriginal applicants.

Most people in such position would just walk away fearing that any complaint would have them branded insensitive bigots who don’t want to help the advancement of the native people of Canada. However, Sara kept asking and the issue attracted the attention of the politicians. We will see later how they reacted, but let’s first check out the application requirements.

Its first conditions (quoted at Westernstandard.com) were:

Applicants must meet at least the first requirement:

* Open to: Members of the following Employment Equity groups: Aboriginal persons, visible minorities

* Persons residing in Canada and Canadian citizens residing abroad.

Further down the government tried to define what visible minority means:

A person in a visible minority group is someone (other than an Aboriginal person as defined above) who is non-white in colour/race, regardless of place of birth. The visible minority group includes: Black, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian-East Indian (including Indian from India; Bangladeshi; Pakistani; East Indian from Guyana, Trinidad, East Africa; etc.), Southeast Asian (including Burmese; Cambodian; Laotian; Thai; Vietnamese; etc.) non-white West Asian, North African or Arab (including Egyptian; Libyan; Lebanese; etc.), non-white Latin American (including indigenous persons from Central and South America, etc.), person of mixed origin (with one parent in one of the visible minority groups listed above), other visible minority group.

This is a real piece of work. Did you notice how meticulously the racial differences were described? It was as if they used a racial determination specialist from Nazi Germany or South Africa. Of course, only the minorities are good and that long paragraph goes out of its way to exclude any possibility that a white person can sneak in.

That’s all great, the whites are not wanted, but what about the other races mentioned there? The first condition states that they want “Aboriginal persons, visible minorities”. “Aboriginal” comes first, does that mean that the aboriginals are better than the other visible minorities? If an aboriginal and a Japanese apply, the latter will probably be rejected.

What if the aboriginal applicant wasn’t “pure”? Let’s assume that we have two half-aboriginals, one with one white parent and another with one black parent. Who are they going to prefer: the darker or the lighter-skinned?

What if we have an aboriginal by marriage? I know somebody who is whiter than Conan O’Brien, but he is married to a Native Canadian woman and has a “Status Indian” card. Technically, he is aboriginal, so can he apply for the position, even though he is the wrong colour? Or do we have to take DNA samples or measure skulls to determine the right race?

I hope you already noticed how absurd the whole scheme is. Is this multicultural horror the final result of all the struggles for equality and recognition of the rights of the individual? You know, even the most fanatical lefties preached respect and equality for men and women…

The whole notion of the affirmative action creates distortion and tension in our society by putting into positions of power and influence people who may be incompetent, but belong to the “right” race. And the statistics already show that in the government jobs women significantly outnumber men and the percentage of minorities is in those jobs is larger than their percentage of the general population.

However, the most disturbing thing is that such hiring practices clearly fit into the Government’s own definitions of racism. The Ontario Human Rights Commission released a publication titled “Anti-racism and anti-discrimination for municipalities: Introductory manual”, which is widely distributed. Here is how it defines racism:

BOX 2: Racism

Racism is a belief that one group is better than another group because of race or colour

Racism can be a conscious or unconscious attitude or value based on an assumption about characteristics of a particular group or religion

Racism can be deeply rooted and displayed openly in racial jokes and slurs or hate crimes

Racism can happen on an individual level, or on a systemic or institutional level

Racism can be profiling or stereotyping of individuals because they belong to a certain race

Racism can occur when policies or practices that may seem or are intended to be neutral result in disadvantages for people of a certain race, ethnic, national or religious group

Racism can result from historical privilege of people who have power.

Let’s go through it point by point and apply each to the application.

Point 1: CHECK! The Aboriginals and the minorities are obviously better than the whites since only they are allowed to apply.

Point 2: CHECK! The application very consciously assumes that the whites don’t have enough value to apply for the job.

Point 3: That’s not clear. Since the whites can’t even apply, they don’t have enough contacts with the human resources to find out about any jokes or slurs.

Point 4: CHECK! That’s definitely racism on institutional level.

Point 5: CHECK! The application very meticulously profiles the races of the people who are acceptable.

Point 6: CHECK! The government hopes to apply policies that seem neutral, but they openly put in disadvantage the white people.

Point 7: CHECK! In the past only the white people ruled, so let’s put them down now.

It would be really good if the government takes the things seriously this time, but of course every action will be fiercely sabotaged. The Liberals and the NDP are already wailing and squeaking and that’s natural: putting different groups of people against each other has always worked to get them few extra votes.

But I really hope that they would abolish that disgrace. People should be selected based on their merit and abilities to do the job. How is hiring an incompetent person going to advance the cause of his or her race (whatever it is)?

Racism has never worked: just look at what happened to Germany and South Africa and what is still happening in Zimbabwe…

Excellent post! Methinks the world has gone mad. Even Martin Lurther King in his famous speech “I have a Dream” at the Lincoln Memorial said that people should “not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.” -or in this case by the person’s qualifications for the job! Are there any updates to this story?

Wow…what a bunch of uninformed comments here, if anyone is suffering from racism it is Aboriginal people from the likes of those who think like you all do…don’t worry you are not oppressed by racism, you benefit from it…

This really is disguisting. I had to fight bilingual laws most of my life (and lost two good jobs because I did not speak french!). Now because I am english, white and not a minority, its double discrimination. The funny thing is, I have native blood in my father’s side of the family from the 1600’s, but I look completely white with green eyes. I have 3 races in me, isnt that considered multicultural in itself? I had to leave my birth province 7 times since age 25, I should have just painted my skin brown and came in on a refugee boat…